Julie Foudy, the two-time Olympic gold medalist and former United States Women's National Team captain who has become a highly respected sports journalist and commentator, has signed a multi-year agreement to remain with ESPN. Foudy will continue to cover major events for espnW and ESPN, including the FIFA Women's World Cup, Olympic Games, Special Olympics and NCAA Championships. She also continues as the brand's leading voice on pay equity, leadership development, and other issues involving women and sports.
She will continue her multi-faceted role as ESPN's lead women's soccer analyst and studio analyst/reporter for select global soccer events. She will also remain a contributor to the
E:60 newsmagazine and Outside the Lines. In 2016, Foudy's
E:60 story "Turf Wars" on the dangers of artificial turf fields earned a prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative reporting.
"I'm ecstatic to extend my work with espnW and the larger
ESPN team," said Foudy. "I look forward to continuing to cover soccer and sports on multiple platforms and in multiple ways, from features, to analysis, to writing and reporting."
Yesterday, Foudy's first book, Choose to Matter: Your Guide to Being Courageously and Fabulously You was published by Disney Publishing Worldwide (DPW) and espnW, and is already climbing the bestseller lists. The book is a hands-on guide to leadership and empowerment for girls and young women using life lessons from Foudy and other accomplished and inspiring women:
GOOD MORNING AMERICA host Robin Roberts, Facebook COO and founder of Leanin.org Sheryl Sandberg, soccer superstars Mia Hamm and Alex Morgan, softball star and
ESPN baseball analyst Jessica Mendoza, and more. Choose to Matter is the first book from DPW's new espnW imprint
"Julie is such an incredible and incredibly unique talent," said Alison Overholt, Editor-in-Chief, espnW and
ESPN The Magazine. "The leadership, work ethic, skill, and absolutely bottomless energy that she brought to the game of soccer - Julie brings all that and more to everything she does with espnW and for ESPN. We're so thrilled for what's next."
Foudy made her
ESPN debut at the height of her playing career as a studio analyst during the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France. She became a regular contributor to
ESPN soccer programming soon after and joined the company full-time in 2005, less than a year after retiring from her 17-year professional career with the U.S. Women's National Team.
By 2006, Foudy became ESPN's lead studio analyst for the FIFA World Cup in Germany and the UEFA European Football Championship 2008 in Austria and Switzerland, becoming the first woman to serve in that role for top-tier international soccer events on U.S. television.
Foudy continued to expand her role at
ESPN over the past decade to include feature reporting on studio programs such as Outside the Lines, SportsCenter,
E:60 and
ABC News. She's also served as a writer and contributor to espnW on several initiatives, including the 40th anniversary of Title IX, and remains a central figure annually at The espnW: Women + Sports Summit.
In 2013, Foudy produced an
ESPN Films documentary "The 99ers" about the U.S. Women's National Team she was part of that won the 1999 Women's World Cup.
Prior to her TV journalism career, Foudy was a midfielder for the U.S. Women's National Team from 1987 through 2004, serving as the team's captain from 2000 through her retirement. During her national team tenure, the U.S. women won two FIFA Women's World Cup titles (1991, 1999), captured two Olympic gold medals (1996, 2004), and the silver medal in 2000. Foudy was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in August 2007.
A former president of the Women's Sports Foundation (2000-02), Foudy received the 1997 FIFA Fair Play Award for her trip earlier that year to Pakistan to examine the working conditions of factories of her then-sponsor, Reebok. A four-time All-American at Stanford and the 1991 Soccer America Player of the Year, Foudy graduated in 1993 with a bachelor's degree in biology. She turned down admission to Stanford Medical School to pursue her career in sports.
